Research Is Unforgiving

There are many wonderful things about the academic career. A great amount of free time, a high social position, a respectable salary, good benefits, the opportunity to spend one's life reading, thinking, and writing, getting paid for expressing one's opinions and growing intellectually, the chance of helping young people to develop their love for learning - all these things make our job one of the best career choices possible. There is, however, one big obstacle a beginning academic needs to overcome, which consists of actually finding a tenure-track position.

There are many positions where one can end up after getting a PhD. One can become a Visiting Professor, an adjunct, a lecturer, an instructor, or get that horrible curse of scholars in the Humanities, a post-doc. It is only a tenure-line position, however, that opens the door to the wonderful things I have listed above. All other positions only lead to crazy teaching loads, no support for research, ridiculously low salaries, and no power of decision-making at one's institution.

Tenure-line positions are very hard to get nowadays. In the first year I was looking for a job, over 400 people competed for one tenure-track job in my field at a college that nobody will ever consider first-tier. The second year I looked for a job, things got worse. Many people fail to find tenure-line positions for a few years after they get their PhDs. Often, they discover that these several years that have elapsed since they graduated and that they spent as adjuncts, post-docs or instructors make them nearly unhireable for any tenure-track positions. As an example, see this story from College Misery.

It might seem very unfair that employers would reject people who have graduated a while ago in favor of "freshly minted PhDs." This policy does, however, have a very practical justification. Research is a very unforgiving endeavor. It is similar to a jealous, high-maintenance lover who cannot be abandoned even for a short time, let alone for years. A while ago, I listened to a scholarly presentation by an academic who hadn't done any research for a few years for a variety of personal reasons. As a result, he was completely clueless about some important new developments that had been done in his field. His presentation sounded like a valiant attack on windmills that weren't really there any longer.

Unfortunately, the teaching loads of adjuncts and instructors are huge, while the pay is extremely low. As a result, they have to teach part-time at a variety of places just to make ends meet. Who has time and energy to think of research under those conditions? Prospective employers understand that and are unwilling to give tenure-track positions to people who have been in such jobs for a while. After I got the PhD, I knew that I had to do everything I could - and more - to get a tenure-line job. Or I would be out of academia for good. This is an extremely stressful situation to be in, but that's how things are.